


Good for your soul but bad for your nerves

by victoria_p (musesfool)



Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Banter, F/M, There's only One Bed!, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:22:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22810930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesfool/pseuds/victoria_p
Summary: "I can hear you thinking.""If that were true, you'd be blushing."
Relationships: Kaz Brekker/Inej Ghafa
Comments: 26
Kudos: 312





	Good for your soul but bad for your nerves

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Melt Your Heart" by Jenny Lewis. Many thanks to Snacky for looking it over.

"I don't know why I agreed to this," Kaz muttered, dropping his bag onto the bed. They'd been traveling for hours that felt like days, days that felt like weeks, with no concrete goal except to get to Os Alta. 

"Because Nina needs us," Inej replied, giving him a piercing look. 

Kaz grunted skeptically, and shook his head.

"And Sturmhond is paying us a lot of money."

He pointed a finger at her. "There it is. I knew there had to be a reason beyond temporary insanity." He clapped his gloved hands together and frowned at how the leather muffled the sound. Now he remembered why he didn't usually clap his hands. Aside from it making him look like a rube.

"Or friendship?"

He snorted, and hoped it came off as disdainful instead of amused, and then hated himself for a moment because he'd thought he was done hiding from Inej. "Or that." 

Inej slipped off her cloak and hung it on the hook behind the door. "We might as well get some sleep." She glanced at the lone bed in the center of the room and then back up at him. "I'll take first watch."

As tempted as he was to argue—and he was surprisingly tempted—he nodded and stripped off his gloves. His scarf and coat and suit jacket followed, then his waistcoat and shirt. Inej watched him intently, and it felt like she was touching him without touching him—all of the shivering anticipation without any of the foul horror of the water pulling him down.

She didn't turn away when his hands went to the waistband of his trousers, and his breath caught, as soft sound, but loud in the sudden silence of the room. She opened her mouth to speak and then stopped, white teeth sinking into her lower lip, and he thought about what it would feel like to do that himself, to feel her lip between his teeth, and that jolt of desire made him turn away, his face hot and his hands trembling as if he were still a nine-year-old boy who'd never even had a naughty thought, let alone committed crimes vile enough to earn the name Dirtyhands.

Inej's sigh was soft but audible, and it could have been relief—he was not the only one with demons in the room—but it could have been disappointment, his own and hers together, and he felt that, in a way he never had with anyone else.

She perched at the foot of the bed after he climbed in, and gave him a quick grin when he snuffed the lantern, her teeth flashing white in the darkness.

He didn't expect to have a hard time sleeping—he trusted her as much as he'd ever trusted anyone, and he was tired from traveling—but his mind couldn't stop replaying different endings to the evening: 

_He paused with his hands on his fly and she took two small steps closer to help, the backs of her fingers brushing his belly, soft and light as spiderlegs, the touch sparking through his body like lightning. Her hands dipped lower and he gasped, hips pushing into her touch._

Or:

_He crawled under the covers and she joined him, two layers of clothes still between them, but lips and hands and tongues free to roam, learning each other's bodies the way they'd learned each other's minds (souls, she would have said, and he'd have scoffed, but in the warm darkness of the bed, he let himself wonder), no thoughts of drowning or disappearing here in this space between them._

Or:

_He called her name, patted the mattress beside him, and she lay down next to him, close enough to breathe the same air, out of his lungs and into hers, the soft cloud of her hair hiding them from the world and all their troubles while they slept._

Of them all, the last one was actually possible, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. They were alone in a strange inn hundreds of miles from home. He might be the boss of the Barrel and she might be the scourge of the True Sea, but who were they, here in Ravka? 

Well, Inej might have Sturmhond's favor—Kaz never had pressed her on whether she knew the pirate's true identity, but he knew that if he knew something it was likely Inej knew it too, probably long before he did—but if the pirate was playing king, he'd be unlikely to acknowledge even knowing Kaz, let alone favoring him, if something happened.

"I can hear you thinking," she said, and he felt his face heat again. If he was lucky, she wouldn't be able to tell _what_ he'd been thinking, but he'd always made his own luck. And maybe she was thinking the same thing.

"If that were true, you'd be blushing," he replied dryly, none of his fluster in his voice.

"Oh!" There was delight in that sound, and amusement, and Kaz wanted to hear it over and over, whispered against his skin, breathed into his ear. "You could tell me," she finally said, and the amusement was still there, layered with teasing and something else, something deeper and darker.

"Could I?" he sputtered, surprised.

She huffed softly. "So much for smooth-talking Kaz Brekker, bastard of the Barrel."

Words had been his tools for years. He'd used them to plot and plan, to threaten and cajole, but he'd never sweet-talked a lover, someone he truly cared about, even if admitting it had been like pulling teeth. And they deserted him for a moment, and then came rushing back too quickly to parse.

He sat up so he could get a better look at her, a curved shadow in a room full of angles. 

"I was just thinking of all the things I'd like to do with you."

She shifted, half-turning towards him and leaning back on one elbow, her face tipped up towards his. "Things like robbing the Grand Palace? Or," her voice dropped low, "more interesting things?"

Kaz let his mouth curve in a genuine smile. "Oh, I don't know, robbing the Grand Palace would be pretty interesting. I think we could pull it off. If there's even anything left to steal." Ravka's empty coffers were no secret to anyone anymore.

"Kaz," she said in reproof, but there was laughter in her voice. "Nina would never forgive us."

"Well, we can't have that, so I guess it's back to the other things I'd like to do with you." He leaned in now, almost brushing her nose with his. "The less criminal, more personal sorts of things."

"Oh." It was a gasp this time, a sharp intake of breath and he could feel the exhale on his skin, on his lips. "I'd like that too," she murmured, her hand coming up to hover a hair's breadth from his cheek. "I'd like that a lot." Then she leaned back and dropped her hand to the bed. "But not tonight." She gave him an impish grin. "You sleep. I'm keeping watch."

"Not tonight," he conceded, though he didn't think he'd sleep much at all after this conversation. "But someday. Soon."

"Soon," she repeated with a nod. 

It had all the weight of a promise, and Kaz swore to himself it was a promise he was going to keep. 

end


End file.
